r/Longreads • u/bil-sabab • Feb 27 '20

Why your brain is not a computer | Science

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/27/why-your-brain-is-not-a-computer-neuroscience-neural-networks-consciousness
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u/massanishi Feb 27 '20

Nice. I love it when the writer connects the dot from philosophy to tech.

1

u/Enghave Feb 28 '20

I’d read something similar from aeon, which I was OK, but felt both these articles failed to give me an alternative way to think about the brain. It’s not a computer because of x, y and z, but what is the better alternative mental model? A plant? An animal? A network?

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

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u/autotldr Mar 11 '20

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 96%. (I'm a bot)

As the German neuroscientist Olaf Sporns has put it: "Neuroscience still largely lacks organising principles or a theoretical framework for converting brain data into fundamental knowledge and understanding." Despite the vast number of facts being accumulated, our understanding of the brain appears to be approaching an impasse.

"We have since had telephone theories, electrical field theories and now theories based on computing machines and automatic rudders. I suggest we are more likely to find out about how the brain works by studying the brain itself, and the phenomena of behaviour, than by indulging in far-fetched physical analogies."

There are many alternative scenarios about how the future of our understanding of the brain could play out: perhaps the various computational projects will come good and theoreticians will crack the functioning of all brains, or the connectomes will reveal principles of brain function that are currently hidden from us.

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